CHICAGO — A shooting Thursday afternoon in Humboldt Park left a 10-year-old girl and two men wounded, police said.
At 12:40 p.m., Tyra Ruffin was sitting on her grandmother's porch in the 4100 block of West Potomac Avenue with her father and his friend when two men emerged from a gangway and started shooting, police and witnesses said.
Tyra was taken to Norwegian American Hospital after sustaining a graze wound and was in fair condition, according to Officer Bari Lemmon, a Chicago Police spokeswoman.
The girl was back home less than three hours after the shooting, clinging to her grandmother with a small band-aid on her forearm.
Tyra's father, 30-year-old Travis Ruffin, had a bullet go through his right arm into his chest and was also hit in the left arm, Lemmon said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition.
The other man, 25, was hit in the ankles and was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair condition, Lemmon said.
Tyra had been sitting in her father's lap when the shots rang out, she said.
"I heard the gunshots, and then I heard my dad say 'Get on the ground,'" she said. As she ran inside the house, she realized she was bleeding from her arm.
"When I saw her she was all 'Ahhh," said Tyra's grandmother, Yvette Ruffin. "Then I was like, 'Ohhhh, that's a bullet.' It skimmed her."
Hours after the shooting, Yvette stood in front of her brownstone two-flat with her arm wrapped tightly around Tyra's shoulders, as more of her grandchildren scurried and played around her.
"That's a nip," Yvette told her granddaughter, giving her a gentle squeeze. "You ain't get shot, you just got nipped."
But Yvette didn't want to take any chances, she said. She wanted to leave the city, and take her family with her.
"We hear shots all the time," Yvette said. "We got to make them go in the house. It's dangerous."
Tyra said she wanted to move away, too.
"I don't like it here," she said quietly, eyes fixed at the ground.
Nanette Rios was in her basement apartment below the porch when she heard the shots ring out, she said. Her 11-year-old son, Devin Henderson, was playing video games when she grabbed him by his shirt and pushed him into a closet to wait for the gunfire to end.
"I almost got shot," Devin said Thursday afternoon, scowling. He stood barefoot in front of his home, clutching a kids' version of the Bible. His finger bookmarked a page titled "Passages to read when you're scared."
Devin said he hears gunshots on the block constantly.
"I just feel like everything is wrong in the world," he said. "I feel like everything is going to pieces."
Rios stood next to her son, beaming down at him.
"This got to stop, for real," she said. "We got kids out here, you know. We're all families here. That's so wrong for them to shoot like this."
Police said both of the men shot were documented gang members.
"It might have been gang-related, I don't know," Yvette Ruffin said of the shooting.
No one was in custody, police said.
On average, nearly one child 13 or younger has been shot every week in Chicago this year, according to the Tribune.
An 8-year-old girl was shot in Austin on Aug. 21, police said. A week earlier, a 6-year-old girl was shot in Pullman.
She was one of at least four 6-year-old girls shot in Chicago this summer.
A girl was shot along with her uncle, who died, in Park Manor in early August. In mid-July, a 6-year-old girl playing near her Englewood home was struck when she was caught in a crossfire of bullets.
Another 6-year-old girl was shot in Logan Square in June.
